Friday, April 23, 2010

Rivers Cuomo wrote two of the greatest and most important albums of the 90's. Both albums fathered entire sub-genres. In 1994, Weezer's The Blue Album is a cornerstone of geek rock and it inspired countless nerdy high school garage bands and even some famous ones (see Ok Go). Two years later, Pinkerton was released, but wasn't well received. Rolling Stone called it one of the worst albums of 1996. However, as you well know, Rolling Stone was barely relevant in the 90's and isn't relevant at all in 2010. Pinkerton grew in popularity after 1996 and is one of the cornerstones of both Blue Sweater Emo and Eyeliner Emo.

Unfortunately, Rivers Cuomo took the rejection of his masterpiece pretty bad and Weezer stopped playing for nearly four years. As the early Internet was starting to explode, the online fan base was exploding with it. Armed with 14 new songs and minus Matt Sharp (bass player, founder of The Rentals), Weezer sold out several tours in 2000. With tons of hype and excited fans, they went to the studio to record their third album. They enlisted Ric Ocasek of the Cars, the producer of the Blue Album, to return and produce number three.

This is where the story goes sour. An exec from Geffen, their record label, came by to hear the songs and he didn't like them. So what did the band do? They moved to a new studio and Rivers wrote an album's worth of songs on the spot. Instead of recording meticulously crafted, interesting, heart-felt music as they once did, Weezer recorded 10 simple, formulaic, bland, lifeless songs for the Green Album.

And that was it. Weezer, one of the most important bands of the 90's, died, and in its place and empty space. ---Pink Triangle was a song on Pinkerton, but this video wasn't released until 2004. It was created by Karl Koch, the super roadie and band documentarian. He is a great guy. Back in 2000, me and some friends followed Weezer around the Midwest for three tours. I had been talking to Karl every night after the shows, he was an awesome guy. We didn't have tickets for a show in Columbia, Missouri and it was sold out. It looked like we weren't getting in, but then I bumped into Karl. He said we were lucky Weezer didn't have many friends in Missouri and he let us in as guests of the band. We got in before everyone else and stood right in the front. That was the best rock show I have seen.